It is our pleasure to present to you the proceedings of the 20th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering. We are delighted that the International Society for Product Enhancement (ISPE) has chosen Melbourne as the venue for their anniversary conference. This is the first time the conference is held in Australia and we hope that you will find the time also to explore the sights of our beautiful city, state and country.

Concurrent Engineering (CE), as a concept, initiates processes with the goal to improve product quality, production efficiency and overall customer satisfaction. The definition of a product has evolved from manufacturing and supplying goods only, to providing goods with added value, to eventually promoting a complete service business solution with support from introduction into service, operations to decommissioning. Services are becoming increasingly important to the economy: the service industry has grown significantly, and even companies that fall outside the traditional service industry are more and more reliant on service-based business. For example, in Japan, USA, Germany and Russia more than 60% of the GDP is due to service-based activities.

The 20th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering will carry the theme Product and Service Engineering in a Dynamic World. This theme was chosen to celebrate the first students graduating from the new Master of Engineering (System Support Engineering) (MSSE) at RMIT University. This programme was a response to a requirement for an educational programme specifically focused on training industry leaders in the design and implementation of support solutions for complex engineering systems, as organisations are becoming increasingly sophisticated, performance-based and cost competitive. The Master degree was developed in cooperation with industry partners.

We are looking forward to hearing about new developments and insights in the various sessions including service engineering, cloud computing and digital manufacturing, knowledge-based engineering and sustainability in concurrent engineering.

Again, welcome to Melbourne and we wish you an inspiring conference and a wonderful stay in Australia.